


The Agony Column

by PlaidAdder



Series: Missing Pages [20]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (1984 TV), Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: BAMF John Watson, Frustration, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Mutual Pining, Sexting, Sherlock Talks Dirty, Story: The Adventure of the Empty House, Story: The Adventure of the Illustrious Client, Victorian Style
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-09-17 17:21:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16978731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlaidAdder/pseuds/PlaidAdder
Summary: To manage Holmes's return to public life, Holmes and Watson have to split up. They need a way to communicate without meeting.Turns out the Times has an app for that.Holmes discovers Victorian sexting; Watson discovers the opening act of a slow-motion tragedy. Related to "Empty House" and "Illustrious Client." This works as a stand-alone, but it will work better if you readMuch To Hope For,Slow Burn, andA Close Shavefirst.





	The Agony Column

_**August ---, 1891** _

Of our clandestine journey from Cornwall to London, I will say nothing save that the moment when we walked into the villa's sitting room and found Mycroft Holmes lurking there silently in the dark is the closest I have ever come to knowing what a burst aneurysm feels like. Between Cornwall and London, our time in Mycroft's specially constructed silent stealth coach was primarily occupied in plotting Holmes's return to public life. Colonel Moran and Lord Holdhurst, of course, already knew that he was alive and with me. Having gained possession of Moriarty Minor's letter, Mycroft was now confident that Lord Holdhurst could be discreetly neutralized. Moran would have to be dealt with more aggressively. But a far greater threat to our peace and security was the fact that we were now criminals in the eyes of the law, scandalous in the eyes of the press, and a gold mine in the eyes of London's ever-increasing swarm of blackmailers. It was necessary that we should create the impression that we were no more than friends and colleagues, else my return to Baker Street might simply be the beginning of a longer and more exhausting round peril and persecution.

Mycroft's plan was this. I would return to my house and my practice alone and resume my normal life, as if I were simply coming back from holiday. Holmes would be surreptitiously introduced into Mycroft's Pall Mall rooms, where he would remain concealed while they busied themselves arranging a trap for Moran. When all was in readiness, Holmes would sally forth and re-establish himself in Baker Street. Once he was certain that he had attracted all necessary attention from all interested parties, he would then casually call on me, at which point my reaction (faithfully recorded and transmitted by the Committee spy that I would soon hire as a servant) would convince all outside observers that Holmes had allowed me to think, all this time, that he was really dead. 

I raised two objections. One, that unlike Holmes I was not a born actor; two, that if I were Mr. Henry Beerbohm Tree himself I could not make a success of this scene. What rational observer who knew either of us even slightly would believe that Holmes would behave so callously towards his friend and colleague? Would simply leave me to mourn his loss, without a word, a note, a hint of his continued existence, for three solid months? What decent man would treat his dearest friend in this villainous fashion? 

"But this is precisely the point," Mycroft retorted. "The object of the deception is to convince the police, the politicians, and your reading public that you are _not_ excessively 'dear' to him."

"I understand that," I said, hotly. "But even if we were purely on a professional basis, this would be ungentlemanly. My readers simply will not believe it of him. The laws of narrative continuity," I said loftily, "may not be quite as inflexible as the laws of logic; but they are laws all the same."

The ensuing debate ended with Holmes reminding his brother, rather pointedly, that the last time Holmes and I had planned a temporary separation for strategic reasons, I had found him again only three months later and on the threshold of death. I will agree to this, he insisted, only if you can guarantee me that during our enforced separation, Watson will receive proof of life every day.

Mycroft sulked. Mycroft could not call upon me without exciting comment; if Holmes left the rooms to meet me he would be observed. Holmes alluded to his talent for disguise. Mycroft insinuated that the only two people in London who were taken in by his disguises were myself and Inspector Lestrade. Fearing they might come to blows, I interjected, "The agony columns."

"Brilliant, Watson!" Holmes replied. Mycroft muttered something indistinct, though I am fairly certain it contained the words "utter lunacy."

And so it was that two days later, I returned from a round of calls to patients who had largely despaired of ever hearing from me again, ensconced myself in the study, and requested Elizabeth, my new housekeeper and Committee spy, to bring in the evening papers and then prepare the evening meal. While she was in the kitchen, I picked up the _Times_ and scanned the second column.

It was a most bewildering experience. Not knowing exactly how Holmes planned to reveal himself to me, I was buffeted this way and that in a fever of anticipation and confusion. It seemed to me that every one of these anonymous or pseudonymous  _cris de coeur_ \--every Juliet imploring her Romeo to climb the orchard wall, every Troilus panting for the beauties of his Cressida, every Samson promising to forgive his Delilah if only she would return to him--could _possibly_ , though not _probably_ , have come from him. I began to despair. Were the ways of love so universal, after all, that one story could never with certainty be distinguished from another? Each of these items came, no doubt, from someone absolutely convinced of the uniqueness of their passion, using code names that only the beloved could know. And yet, even in one evening's paper, I spotted three Darcys, two Guineveres, and four Lochinvars. Were our conventions so rigid, our stock of narratives so small, that try as we might we could only call out to each other by donning one of these old worn-out masks and speaking through it?

And then I saw it:

**"FIGARO. Business still very pressing. Have patience. Am quite well, but desperate for a shave. Keep your razor handy and your spirits high. ALMAVIVA."**

The shock of recognition threatened to bring tears to my eyes; but Elizabeth was puttering about near the study door, and I could not afford them. I tossed the paper carelessly aside, and went to dinner. 

Elizabeth is an indifferent cook; but I am always careful to demonstrate a keen appetite. I am not to give any indication that I am pining, or brooding; I am to be healthy as a horse that has never known anxiety or grief. I kept up a cheerful countenance by thinking about Holmes piling cushions up in a corner of Mycroft's study, sitting enthroned upon them, smoking all day, dreaming his way to the solution of our problem.

It is curious how certain thoughts will take root in one's brain. By the time I had consumed Elizabeth's lumpy pudding, I could think of nothing but Sherlock Holmes, wrapped in a dressing-gown and nothing else, sitting cross-legged upon a few embroidered and gold-tassled cushions. His eyes were closed, his breathing slow and deliberate, almost as if he were asleep. But his lips curved in an insinuating smile. As I watched him, his eyelids lifted, slowly, langorously, unveiling large, bright eyes fixed upon me. He gazed upon from that place of perfect serenity into which he could now occasionally gather himself. I saw that look for the first time during our stay in Cornwall. It is a look of perfect contentment; and at the same time, it is a look of limitless desire. It is impossible, that look of his. It is witchcraft. It certainly never fails to cast its spell upon me.

I rose from the table, I hope not too abruptly, and retired to my study. It seemed suspicious to go directly to bed. Yet I was unable to stop tormenting myself, and also unable to relieve the torment. I investigated, as if with merely casual interest, the rest of the agony column. Curiosity proved an effective distraction, at least temporarily. Each of these items was its own mystery or adventure. Most of them were destined to remain mysterious, except to the participants. With some, the purpose--an assignation, an exchange of contraband, the pleading for renewed affections, the continuation of an argument--was clear enough, if the details remained incomprehensible. Some were absolute gibberish. Some achieved a kind of absurd poetry. I have pasted below some of today's favorites:

_Yellow and Red. Don't forget, and mind and be steady tonight. He is ever thinking. Be firm, and don't be got round. Yours till death, "St. A."_

_CURLY FEATHER. Wet or dry, must I never see you more? DISCONSOLATE UMBRELLA._

_WOOLOOMOOLOO shout rapidly and royally. Varmint all vanished. Impetuous Popsey impecunious._

_E.G.G. (en voyage).--Pitch Decimals to little boys at school; the proper place for them; but pitch yourself into the 'Hotel de Commerce' in Grenoble, the proper place for you.--E. W._

_WHOOLY BEAR. Danger. Write fully to "the General's friend" only. No. 21, or per Queen._

_Do not forget the beef tea._

How can one not pity the disconsolate umbrella, or wish to be a fly on the wall in the 'Hotel de Commerce'? Who could refuse to marvel at the fact that somewhere in London was someone who knew he was WHOOLY BEAR just as certainly as I knew I was Figaro--and who might be in some sort of unspecified "danger" from which only a Queen (surely not THE Queen) could save him? Even more miraculously, somwehere in London, some anxious heart was soothed by this reminder about the crucial importance of beef tea. No wonder the agony column had occupied Holmes's attention, sometimes, for hours on end. Even with his powers of deduction, it could not have been possible for him to solve most of these conundrums. Logic cannot do everything; it requires context.

It was more surprising to note how many of these messages appear, on a first reading, to be innocently sentimental--and prove, on a second reading, to be outrageous smut. And--even more curious--vice versa. For instance, this item:

_KITTY. Please come home to your  poor old tabby. Tabby is not angry. She only wants to nuzzle her own ginger pussikins. MAMA CAT._

What is the meaning of this? One cannot know. Perhaps a broken-hearted tom is wailing for the minx who left her for another. Perhaps some revolting bawd is pursuing a poor ruined girl who has escaped from her cathouse. But it is equally probable that a lonely spinster accidentally let her beloved cat out while taking in her milk delivery, and now places these advertisements daily in the deluded belief that her cat can read the _Times_. That is the world of the agony columns. A churning void echoing with the voices of the damned, the desperate, the criminal, the endangered, the lonely, the mad. All words that could, right now, easily apply to either Holmes or myself. 

At the earliest decent moment, I took the paper up to bed with me. Release is a necessary condition of fulfillment but it is not sufficient. It is well-named, the agony column.

JW

 

_**August --, 1891.** _

Work is not a very good antidote for sorrow, but regarding my current complaint it seems to be at least as effective as saltpeter. The Holmes brothers had better work quickly, or I will have actually established a thriving practice when the time comes to let it be known that I can no longer afford this mortgage.

Once again, I repaired to the study with the agony column. I have been forbidden to reply to any of Holmes's messages; I am being watched, and I cannot begin going to the _Times_ office daily without giving away the game. I could only wait impatiently for his next communication. He had promised me not to use the same persona more than once. Readers of the agony columns, like any other reader, become more invested in repeating characters. Fifty-odd years later, journalists still talk about the "One-Winged Dove" and her faithless "Crane" over their port and cigars. Lestrade, after two glasses of Tokay, will happily relate the story of how he nearly unmasked one Pollacky, who was almost certainly running some type of criminal ring, though Lestrade could never discover whether it was forgery, prostitution, or murder for hire. Here are some of today's gems:

_The weight of this deep feeling is almost more than I can bear._

_My star of hope wanes to white. News that you are better would revive its glow._

_You could not speak. It was too sudden. I am a good rider. Green is my favorite color. I want money._

_Dearest KITTY. Come home. No reproaches, no questions. Nothing but love for my own Kitty. I won't even slap that bad old tom. MAMA CAT._

I felt a pang of sympathy for Mama Cat. But it was soon overwhelmed by excitement as, from this muddy river, I extracted my golden nugget:

**"THE RENAISSANCE APPROACHES. Not yet, but soon. A masterpiece cannot be rushed. _Ars longa, vita brevis._ Burning always with this ever-harder gemlike flame. Your devoted W. P."**

As Holmes had undoubtedly intended, this blend of genuine longing with mischievous provocation instantly ignited a flame of my own. Hearing Elizabeth stop in the doorway, I arranged the paper strategically, informed her that I would dine out this evening, and walked very deliberately to my room. The most immediate pressures relieved, I dressed and went out.

I immediately became the prey of a cruel indecision. Everywhere I liked to dine, I had dined with Holmes. If I went to one of our known haunts, would that seem suspicious? But if I went somewhere new, would I appear to be avoiding our old haunts out of grief? Would that not be even more suspicious?

I had walked for some twenty minutes, not caring where I was heading, before my stomach insisted upon a decision. I was, fortuitously, opposite the awning of a restaurant. It was ostentatious without being tasteful; the decor seemed to be aspiring toward a degree of luxury which was certainly not evident in the dishes on the menu. I ordered shepherd's pie and ale, and hoped the unaesthetic surroundings might dim that troublesome gemlike flame. I took out my casebook, as I do when I dine alone, and began in a desultory way to make some notes. From a table across the room I heard the sound of girlish, careless, silvery laughter. I glanced discreetly toward the table. 

The girl seated there was young, and strikingly beautiful in a frail, Rosettian way. She wore her red-gold hair up in a great mass of curls, revealing a slender ivory neck about which she had clasped a chain of diamonds. Her skin was porcelain; her eyes clear and blue. Her dress, while rich, was unworthy of her beauty; too bright and garish, too highly ornamented, too many materials in too many bunches and bows. She could not have been more than seventeen. She leaned her chin in her hand and looked up adoringly at the man across from her. I could understand why. Though a little older than myself, he was a strikingly handsome man--well-shaped, raven-haired, with large, dark eyes and a carefully pointed and waxed moustache.

But then he spoke. I cannot explain it, but the way his mouth moved made me shudder. I saw him reach across the table to take one of the girl's red curled tresses between his fingers, and gently caress her cheek with tobacco-stained fingers. She turned her head, and pressed her lips to his palm. I fear I let out a noise of astonishment.

For an instant, her blue eyes met mine, and her nostrils flared in anger. I busied myself immediately with my shepherd's pie, blushing in spite of myself. 

"Something wrong, my love?" inquired the man, in silken and yet somehow menacing tones.

"Nothing," she said. "Only a dirty old man getting an eyeful."

If she meant to wound me, she failed; I felt only pity. Her voice told me the story. She  _looked_ like a Botticelli painting; she sounded like a Covent Garden flower girl pretending to be a duchess. Her clothes and general state of health suggested she was being kept; walking the streets, even for a short time, leaves marks that I could not see upon her. And yet, in the laugh they shared, I could detect on her part only gaiety; and after the kiss I heard rather than saw them share, she said, "Oh, Addy, I do love you."

"My own wickedest wonderful girl," purred the man. "Shall we begin with the oysters?"

The worldly laugh with which she greeted this pained me; but I dared not risk another glance. I also dared not linger. The girl was safe, enjoying her food, evidently enthralled by her handsome and attentive patron. But I could not help imagining the story that would unroll from this moment. The man tires; he discards her; she drifts from second choice to third to fortieth and finally to utter ruin and destitution. The same tragedy plays nightly all over this great city. Yet when this one girl is cast off, she will be heartbroken, shocked. She will not have seen it coming. Somehow even when one knows--as I do--that all the stories have already been written, and that for lovers there are at most some half dozen possible variants, one always believes one's own story is unique. One never allows oneself to know that the ending has already been written.

I will dine at home tomorrow. Holmes is fascinated by the outre and the bizarre; those are the mysteries that engage his intellect. For me, it is the commonplace crime that breaks the heart.

 

_**August --, 1891.** _

Every night I scan the agony column more quickly. All the same, I could not pass over this extraordinary item:

_M.C. Please don't. My heart is breaking. Farewell. Love to you always. Your lost KITTY._

After such a long silence, I had never expected to see Mama Cat's pleas answered. I had come unconsciously to think of Kitty as, in fact, a cat. So much humanity was pressed into these few words. Never, in a history of strange and cryptic communications, had I encountered one so naively transparent and yet so maddeningly opaque. Whoever Kitty was, her words told a tale of betrayal, and yet they came from an innocent and loving heart. It was painful to contemplate.

I turned for relief--or let me be honest, a more absorbing species of pain--to the other advertisements. I found what I was looking for:

**"BEAUTY. It is winter without you. My garden droops and withers. Only the moss-rose lifts its dewy head, straining its stiff neck toward an invisible sun. Fearful still of Diana's arrows, I prowl the rooms and howl at the walls. Soon we will hunt. For now, patience. Your ill-tempered, impatient and famished BEAST."**

I tossed the newspaper toward the grate as if it might scorch me. Half-human, half-vulpine creatures had begun to chase each other in the dark recesses of my imagination. It would never have occurred to me to picture Holmes as a wild man, with shaggy hair and bristling pelt, roaming the shadows in search of something to sink his teeth into. Now, I found I could do nothing else. Amazed at my own depravity, and more than a little astonished at Holmes's, I informed Elizabeth that I had already dined, that I had a slight cold, and that I was retiring early as a precaution. 

I have had many adventures with Sherlock Holmes, but this particular species of excitement is new to me. It is almost unendurable; and yet every evening, I find myself thirsting for it. Every night a new hunt, a new bit of buried treasure. Every night he revealed himself to me under a new guise, and every night I have the thrill of smoking him out of his hiding-place.  _Expert single-stick player, alive and well, desperately seeks same. Two priceless carbuncles, brilliant blue and diamond-hard, free of charge to the right owner. Medical attention urgently required for a caged and neglected GIGANTIC HOUND._

Is this how Holmes feels, on those days that he goes without rest and without food? Does the prospect of the chase somehow affect him the way these coded messages affect me? It would explain much.

 

**_August --, 1891._ **

I have had my dinner; I have read the paper; I have thrown the agony column into the grate; I have regretted it and plucked it half-burned from the ashes; I have retreated, without unseemly haste, to my room; I paste below the two advertisements currently tormenting me.

**"BOSWELL. Dr. Johnson yet lives. This nonsense ends now. G MAJOR."**

There is, of course, no key of H. I knew exactly who had called this tune. Holmes's last missive must have been a scorcher indeed.

Disappointment turned to consternation, however, when I read the item pasted in below:

**"MAMA CAT. I can deny your supplications no longer. Midnight tonight. The Larches, Twyckenham. Oh! Do take pity! I  have wronged you terribly; but I have been most cruelly treated. Your unfortunate KITTY."**

Sleep comes readily on these nights, once all my imagination is spent; but not this time. I must confess, as ridiculous as I know this will sound, that I am very uneasy in my mind about Mama Cat. First, there is the address: a large, secluded house in a quiet and unfashionable suburb. It is exactly the type of house which, in my experience, is closely associated with starved Greeks and de-thumbed engineers. Then there is the message itself. Admittedly my sample of "Mama Cat's" writing is small, and my sample of Kitty's even smaller. Nevertheless, what kept me tossing and turning was a nagging sense that Kitty could not possibly have written that message. Indeed, I was almost certain, nobody who knew Mama Cat to speak to could have addressed her thus. Both Mama Cat and Kitty expressed themselves with a great deal of sentiment, but with the simplicity, sincerity, and even banality of ordinary speech. "Kitty's" second message could have been introduced into any ingenue's speech in any popular melodrama. The gratuitous punctuation, the unnecessary polysyllabics, and most of all the urgent appeals to one who was ready to seize eagerly upon even the most indifferent of invitations, all suggested to me that this advertisement had been planted by someone posing as Kitty, possibly without her knowledge. Its purpose could only be to lure Mama Cat to a remote area where

Where what?

I can imagine a few possibilities. None of them are good.

I cannot sleep; and there is only one way to find out. Elizabeth retired long ago. I believe I can risk it.

JW

 

_**Postscript.** _

I believe that, before Elizabeth awakens to begin her morning preparations, I have just time to recount the events of last night. 

Before traveling to The Larches, I determined that there was only one train that left the Twyckenham station after midnight: the 1:13. By the 10:36 I could reach The Larches, I estimated, at approximately quarter past eleven. I would conceal myself on the grounds and await developments. If the only development was that Mama Cat and her Kitty were safely reunited, then I could simply take the train home with everyone none the wiser. But if some sort of ambush was in the offing, I would see it planned, and perhaps avert it. It is true that my attempts to do this in Violet Smith's case came to nothing; but so much had elapsed since then. I felt that even without Holmes by my side, I should acquit myself creditably.

The area surrounding The Larches is wooded; but unfortunately, between the house itself and the stone wall that outlines the grounds, there is no natural cover. It is all lawns and flowerbeds in the French style. There is, however, a central fountain built around a second-rate reproduction of the Venus de Milo. By crouching behind it, I could conceal myself at least from the point of view of the house. The night was cloudy, that the gaslit street was on the other side of the tree cover, and the electric light over the front entrance, while powerful, did not cast its beams as far as the central fountain. In the house itself, there were lights burning in one of the first-floor bedrooms that looked out over the front entrance; but as the curtains were drawn, I could not identify the owners of the shadows that occasionally passed across the illuminated brocaded drapes.

I have been on many such vigils--but always with Holmes at my side. Alone, I found it difficult to keep my senses keen and my mind on the task at hand. I could not feel his quivering alertness, which had always produced its echo in my own flesh; nor could I rely on his finer senses to hear, smell, or otherwise detect the villain before I did. Up to now, I realized, had not truly been watching for the night's quarry. I had only been watching Holmes. The hand around the wrist, the whisper in the ear, the pressure of his fingers on my shoulder drawing me back into the shadows--those were the signs that I had always looked for. But he was not there to give me those signs. _I_ would perceive the subtle change that told us that the scene was finally beginning--or else I would be taken by surprise. 

The first noise I could distinguish in the darkness came from the gravel drive near the gate. There were new Swann and Edison lamps perched on each gatepost, but they were not illuminated. Still, as the cloud cover broke up for a moment, I could perceive a human form toiling up the drive. It was a stoutish woman, in a shirt and dress of some coarse material and a straw bonnet. She moved without grace, but with definite purpose, toward that brightly illuminated front entrance. 

If in fact they intended to ambush her inside the house, I realized, I was too far away to do her any good. I crept, slowly, to the edge of the fan of light described by that electric lamp. From there, I saw the door opened by a manservant. There was a murmur of voices--the highest and most feminine one being also the most insistent--and finally the manservant departed, as another figure dressed in white appeared in the doorway. It was that of a graceful young lady, with porcelain skin, and a quantity of curling red hair. 

If I crept any closer I risked being discovered. Yet, when I saw a man in evening dress appear behind her, I could hardly bear to stay still. Voices were raised, again indistinctly--and now I recognized the figure in white as the girl I had seen dining in the restaurant with her paramour, the man with the cruel mouth and the waxed moustache. I saw her turn and embrace him, eagerly, without restraint. 

"Kitty!" shouted the stouter woman's voice. "How _can_ you?"

"I love him," shouted the woman in white. I heard her clear as a bell. "I will never leave him. Let me go. You must let me go."

Both women were sobbing now. The woman in white made as if to embrace the other. The man in evening dress pushed her gently backward, and slammed the door in the other woman's face. 

The stouter woman screamed as if she were being stabbed. She hammered on the door with her fists. Arrested by this piteous spectacle, I did not perceive the three men who were approaching her from round the southwest corner of the house until they were nearly upon her. 

It all happened with dizzying speed. One of the men struck the sobbing woman in the head, knocking her to the flagstones. The second knelt down to pinion her arms, grabbing them by the wrists; the third seized her ankles. The first man stood up, fully illuminated by the electric globe above the front entrance, and began removing his coat, flexing his fingers, making a fist.

Something theatrical about the gesture caused me to look round, instinctively, for an audience.

In the illuminated bedroom, the curtains were no longer drawn. The woman in white stood there, her mouth open, screaming over and over again a word I couldn't hear. There was a man's hand around the back of her neck; a man's arm around her waist; a man's form crushing her up against the window, holding her in that posture, forcing her to look at what his thugs were staging on the flagstones below. 

I had no thought of strategy. Blind fury drove me into the arc of light, and my fists into the standing man's face. While he toppled, I laid into the man holding the woman's ankles, and stretched him on the stones with one blow. I aimed my boot at the second man's privates, which he had so imprudently exposed by squatting. With him shrieking and rolling on the stones, I grasped the shaking woman by one hand and helped her to her feet. 

"Run," I panted into her terrified face. She was older than I had expected--weathered by the elements and lined with sorrow. "The odds are bad and getting worse. Get to a lighted street. Stay in the light and near people till you are safe home."

"But--" the woman began.

"You can't save her!" I shouted. "Not here and now. There's too many of them. RUN. Live to fight another day. There's a train at 1:13. Do you have train fare?" She nodded. "Then go. GO!"

She ran off across the lawn. One of the men was still down and whimpering. One of the other two made to follow the woman; I stopped his career by driving both my fists into the neighborhood of his solar plexus. I could not see the ringleader.

He was to my left, in my blind spot, in the act of striking me in the head with a truncheon.

I thought that the explosion and the flying sparks were neurological symptoms caused by the blow to my head. Then I saw that the patch of lawn onto which I had fallen was now dark. The electric globe above the front entrance had been shattered. While the ringleader covered his head and cursed, I felt an unseen hand fasten onto my shoulder with an iron grip. My whole body went rigid. A voice hissed into my ear.

"Come here, you magnificent imbecile," muttered Sherlock Holmes.

While the three men began groping through the sudden darkness, Holmes half-dragged me down the lawn, past the central fountain, and over the low stone boundary wall. Some yards beyond it, almost blending into the darkness, was a black brougham drawn by a black horse with black reins. Black shades had been drawn down over the windows. Perched on the box, wrapped in a black cloak with a black hat, was a monstrous, squat form which I recognized, after a moment of unreasoning terror, as that of Mycroft Holmes.

His younger brother stuffed me into the carriage, closed and locked the door, and knocked on the roof with the butt of his revolver. The horse wheeled, and the cab began speeding away.

It was, of course, pitch dark inside the cab, which as far as I was concerned might as well have come straight from the underworld with Hades for a driver. I felt, rather than saw, Holmes hovering over me. His quivering fingertips traveled over my temple, then round the back of my head and the angle of my jaw, measuring the damage. 

"It will be all right," I whispered. "I never lost consciousness."

"I'm relieved to hear it," said Holmes's voice, from very close by. "Though by heaven, Watson, I believe you _have_ lost your senses. What do you mean, taking on a gang like that single-handed?"

I reached up into the darkness and found his shoulders. I followed their line up the nape of his neck to the back of his head. When he took breath to berate me again, I pulled his mouth onto mine. 

Within the impenetrable shadow of that darkened coach, we writhed against each other, twisting our limbs and bodies into fantastic contortions as we plunged into each other's mouths. His hands were everywhere. Mine were too--chasing the lines, grappling the angles, as if trying to give my brain the information that darkness denied me. 

"How did you--"

"The committee," Holmes breathed, as he unbuttoned my trousers.

"What?" I gasped, groping in the dark for his own buttons.

"Elizabeth. She's been collecting the discarded newspapers, Watson, and sending notes about what you cut out of them."

The sweet ecstasy of having Holmes in my hand once again could not entirely extinguish the pang of shame.

"Thank heavens for your natural curiosity and love of sensation," Holmes murmured, with his open mouth against my neck. "You clipped so many of the cursed things you hid my own leaves in a veritable forest. As far as she could tell, the only thing you were really  _following_ was Mama Cat and Kitty."

"And a fine mess I made of it," I said, ruefully.

"Don't distress yourself, Watson," said Holmes, now genuinely concerned. "You accomplished the only thing I believe you  _could_ have accomplished: Mama Cat lives unbruised, out of that blackguard's power. Her daughter, on the other hand..."

"Her _daughter_ ," I repeated.

"Of course that is the relationship," Holmes said. "Not everything has a double meaning."

"But--" I began.

"Her daughter, as I said, is lost. Even if we could return tomorrow with Lestrade and ten of his stoutest men, we could do nothing to save her. She would not leave him."

"Even after--"

"Watson, men like him do not seduce women; they trap  them. After they have deprived their women of the ability to resist or reject them, that is when they reveal their true selves. It is a low form of cunning, but certain men have developed it to a high art. They will part when he discards her, and not before."

I cannot deny that, as I felt the truth of Holmes's assessment, I felt a pricking in my throat, and tears spring to my eyes. 

"Oh Watson," he said. "You must understand, we cannot save everyone."

"I never said I could," I replied, sadly.

"In any case, I believe our paths will cross again," said Holmes. "You notice that during that entire melee, the owner of that house never once entered the fray. He has already attained the stage of criminal development where he can afford to hire his beatings out to agents, and prefers watching violence to participating in it. A subtle man full of misused sophistications. No, we have not seen the last of Adelbert Gruner."

"How do you know--"

"Mycroft knows the addresses of all foreigners of note residing in London," Holmes said. 

I felt him coming closer, in the dark.

"You would have done better," I said, quivering a bit in anticipation. "You know you would have."

"Watson," he murmured from the warmth and the dark, "if I had gone out there alone tonight, the results would have been no different."

"But when you go into these...situations, you always come out right."

He laid his hands against my shirtfront and spoke gently, with his lips just brushing against mine.

"Oh Watson," he murmured. "I don't go in _alone_. You're there with me. That's the point. I always have my Watson; but who Watsons the Watson?"

"Now you're just talking nonsense," I said.

He kissed me, gently, as if he were trying to tell me something. I tried to take it in.

When I drew breath again, I said, "Well, I still intend to go home and write myself down an ass."

He laughed. I felt his hands slide round my hips and take a purchase on my backside.

"Ars longa, vita brevis," he murmured.

I laughed. He laughed too. 

"I did my best," Holmes said, shifting his weight. The floorboards of the rattling cab gave an extra creak as he knelt upon them. "Of course  _longa_ doesn't do at all for the double meaning. _A_ _rs formosa,_ perhaps..." he said, bringing one hand round to undo my shirtfront. "Or  _pulcherissima bacciballum..."_

Bacciballum is a hapax legomenon--a word which occurs only once in the ancient texts, and therefore cannot be translated for lack of context. Holmes collects hapax legomena. Each is an insoluble mystery. Not unlike the mystery that drew us together; not unlike the mystery that had drawn me out to Twyckenham in the dead of night; not unlike the mystery that had drawn two Holmes brothers (the elder surely enraged to the point of fratricide) out there after me to save me from my own incompetence.

"Now," he finally murmured, as the coach began to slow to a stop. "I am afraid, Watson, that we shall have to dump you out on Wandsworth Common, and I must submit to be spirited away once more." 

"For how long?" I cried.

There was a moment of silence. 

"Tomorrow, Watson," he said. "At six o'clock, tomorrow, I will call upon you at home. I may be in disguise."

There is no  _may be_ about it. "Is that the plan?" I said.

"It is as of tonight," he replied. "That waxwork is finished whether Monsieur Meunier thinks it is or not. Artists, Watson," he snapped. "Never get entangled with one if you can help it. They are the most exacting, infuriating, impossible creatures on earth. They are never satisfied."

As if I didn't know.

My journey home from Wandsworth common was cold, and damp, and I did not care. As I finish this entry, I am only troubled by the sight of that young woman in the upstairs bedroom, screaming as she watched the scene below. "Kitty" had believed, at least until that moment behind the windowpanes, that her fancy man truly loved her. A mind that could engineer the sort of torture must be unimaginably depraved. What chance had that young, flaming-haired girl against a blackguard like that? What chance had she to break free--or even to survive?

At home, before beginning this narrative, I wrote a letter with all relevant particulars, sealed it, and locked it in the safe in which I store this journal. Tomorrow I will post it to Annie Harrison. Percy, of course, had to be informed of how things stand with us in order to play his part; and certainly keeps no secrets from his wife. I hope they will take up her case. Mary has given me to understand that the subject of 'fallen women' is one which has caused significant internal strife in the past.

Tonight, all I can do is put this journal under lock and key and go to sleep in happy, if exhausted, anticipation of the future.

JW

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> It is important for you to know that apart from Mama Cat/Kitty and Holmes's notes to Watson, ALL of the agony column items included in this story **are actual agony column advertisements** taken from _The Agony Column of the 'Times,' 1800-1870,_ and anthology of Times agony column entries published by Alice Clay in 1881. I tried to invent my own, but I couldn't; they are just so weird and so apparently random that it was impossible for me to really capture the flavor. The "One-Winged Dove" and "Pollacky" are also real agony column 'characters.' You OWE it to yourself to check this book out. No wonder Holmes was so into the agony column. It was WILD.
> 
>  
> 
> Sometimes, because of the phrase "Agony Aunt," people assume the agony column was an advice column. It was not. It was a place where you could print any kind of message, anonymously or pseudonymously, in public for all to see, without anyone being able to trace your identity. In other words, it was the Internet. More specifically, like pre-Facebook internet...or pre-December 17 tumblr.


End file.
